Law and ICT: The Cheapest Marketplace

Setting up a business takes a lot of time and planning. You have to write down all your needs, budget for them and find a location to set up shop. Though finding a place to sell your wares is not too hard, finding a place where your target market is that fits your budget is a little more difficult - this is why the internet can be deemed a godsend for many business-minded people.

The internet has been home to many sellers - conventional and non-conventional alike. You can find anything for sale on the net - goods, services ... people. E-bay has been home to auctions and straight buy items: antiques, cars, perfumes, novelty items - anything you can think of that's usually not illegal. You can buy items from halfway across the world with just one click. Convenient indeed. Sites like Jobstreet and Linked-in are useful to job-seekers and potential employers because they advertise a person’s expertise, usually for free. No cost, no hassle.

Then, there's porn. Internet pornography has existed for almost as long as the World Wide Web. and they have generated so much income that the pioneers (heck probably even the new webmasters) have more money than they know what to do with - the traffic in these sites are probably phenomenal... right boys? They sell their services like nobody's business because anyone with a decent amount of testosterone would probably have searched for this service (is porn a service? I bet a lot of people service themselves while watching porn, so it probably is) one time or another in their lives - for some, probably on a daily basis. And you know what the nice thing about these sites is? These porn sites know how to attract their clientele like nobody's business. They do so by making pop-ups and putting bugs and spammy links and what not on the sites of unsuspecting people - sometimes even (not so) innocent adolescents. Welcome to the World of Wonder little boys and girls!

If you're adventurous and virtual fun is no longer enough to whet your sexual appetite, you can also buy a mail-order bride. There are so many brides to choose from! Collect them all! There's the Chinese Temptress Bride, the Thai Feline Bride, the Demure Filipina Bride and many more! "And they can be yours for only $_ _ _.99! So what are you waiting for?? Buy now and get them a visa with that order! That's right, not only will you have a mail-order bride, we'll arrange a visa for them too!" What a deal. Who could resist?

It’s a good thing the Average Joe doesn’t have the guts to order anything as exotic as a mail-order bride, after all, governments are doing a crappy job at cracking down on this *very* lucrative business. It’s a better thing that the Average Joe and Jane buy their stuff off of E-bay and Multiply and Facebook – because these sites do a better job at policing wares than governments do.

Speaking of Multiply and Facebook; if Friendster was the Granddaddy of Facebook, then Multiply is its Daddy. Friendster has long since been rendered obsolete, despite is very vigorous and rather desperate attempt at revamping its whole image. Multiply, on the other hand, has stayed afloat. Sensing that impending doom was approaching, it whipped its horses harder and galloped into a new dimension – from “social-networking site,” it became the “virtual marketplace.” Too many diverse results on Google for you? Log on to Multiply and buy items from similarly-located hawkers and vendors. The great thing about it is there is a diverse mix of items and services you’ll find on it – more diverse than what the nearby average tiangge can offer, and you can look at them all without burning rubber.

Facebook too is slowly turning into a marketplace – only classier – because you get “tagged.” Being tagged in pictures of underwear and shoes can sometimes be annoying, you would have to untag yourself from them one by one - but if you’re the seller, this is a convenient way of getting your product out there. The person’s friends can all see the photos he or she is tagged in (unless their settings are really private,) and they will say “Hey, this looks good, I’ll visit this page, maybe I’ll see something I like.” The great thing about it? You, the seller, only took a couple of minutes to tag your contacts and you get a pyramid effect without having to pay commission. Nice.

So if you’re a vendor looking to start small, why not start with the internet? It’s fast, it’s effective and it’s free. No need to pay rent and no need to employ a tindera. Big savings, yes?